How do I invest in cryptocurrency?

It's the most-Googled investing question in the world. Here's how crypto investing works in practice — and why, at Oak Growth, we don't do it and can't analyse it the way we analyse a business.

The short answer

You buy cryptocurrency through an exchange — you open an account, verify your identity, deposit money, and buy a coin such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, which sits in a digital wallet. Mechanically, it's simple.

The harder question isn't how — it's whether. And this is where we'll be honest with you rather than tell you what you want to hear.

Why we don't invest in crypto

Oak Growth is built on one idea: buy a business for less than it's worth. To do that, you need to work out what it's worth — its intrinsic value. That calculation needs inputs: revenue, profit, cash flow, assets, debt. A company has all of these because it does something — it sells products, earns money, owns things.

A cryptocurrency has none of them. Bitcoin has no revenue. It has no profit. It produces no cash flow. It owns no assets and pays no dividend. There is no annual report to read, no balance sheet to check, no earnings to grow.

That means there is nothing to value. When we can't calculate what something is worth, we can't tell whether it's cheap or expensive — and buying something you can't value isn't investing, it's speculating on price.

What fundamental analysis needs — and what crypto lacks

Every metric our screener uses to judge a company simply doesn't exist for a coin. Consider what we'd normally look at:

Price-to-earnings ratio? There are no earnings. Return on equity? There is no equity and no profit. Free cash flow? Nothing is produced, so there's no cash flow. Margin of safety? That needs an intrinsic value to compare against — and there isn't one.

A Bitcoin is worth exactly what the next person will pay for it, and no more. That price is driven by sentiment, momentum and speculation — not by anything you can analyse in advance. Warren Buffett made the same point: an asset that produces nothing can only be sold to someone who hopes to sell it to someone else for more.

If you still want exposure

None of this is a moral judgement — plenty of people hold some crypto. But treat it honestly for what it is: a speculative bet, not a valued investment. Never put in money you can't afford to lose entirely, keep it to a small share of your portfolio, and don't mistake a rising price for a sound analysis.

For the part of your money you want to invest rather than gamble — where you can actually judge value — that's where a business-focused approach comes in. Start with how to start investing.

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